Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) recently slashed roughly $370 million worth of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) grants at the Department of Education. Over the past few weeks, DOGE has sought to cut wasteful spending at the federal level, zeroing in on DEI-related spending in particular.
The newly formed department recently revealed that it ended approximately 70 DEI training grants with the federal agency, saving taxpayers $373 million. One of the grants reportedly trained teachers to “engage in ongoing learning and self-reflection to confront their own biases and racism, and develop asset-based anti-racist mindsets.”
Furthermore, DOGE also announced that it had canceled nearly $10 million allocated to UC Berkeley to create “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills.” Musk and DOGE’s cost-cutting department also announced that it had terminated another 89 contracts with the DOE totaling $881 million, of which DEI grants comprised $100 million.
The American Tribune recently reported on comments from Musk while on the campaign trail last October, in which he highlighted the “staggering amount” of fraud within government spending. At the time, Musk maintained the administration would fix the issue if President Donald Trump won the election.
“The amount of waste that happens with the federal government is really staggering. It’s a staggering amount of waste of taxpayer money,” he said. “We have to say, Well, what does this do for the citizens of America? How is this good for people in America? That’s it’s their money. For some weird reason, a lot of people in the state, or whatever the politicians, they seem to forget that money being spent is, is your money.”
Musk continued, “And if it’s not spending, being spent in a way that is beneficial to the American people, it’s a misuse of the funds. I mean, there’s this, there’s a lot of money that’s being spent where we’re sort of illegals are getting more benefits than citizens like that that doesn’t make any sense.”
Additionally, The Tribune reported that DOGE had found nearly $2 billion that had been “misplaced” by the Biden administration. DOGE wrote on X, “$1.9 billion of HUD money was just recovered after being misplaced during the Biden administration due to a broken process. These funds were earmarked for the administration of financial services, but were no longer needed. @SecretaryTurner and @DOGE worked together to fix the issue and de-obligated the funds which are now available for other use by the Treasury.”
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Watch Musk speaking on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania below:
DOGE also shared a recent Valentine’s Day post about its goal to reduce wasteful spending. “Roses are red, violets are blue, Today, DOGE and 10 agencies made 586 wasteful contracts bid adieu! With a ceiling value of $2.1B and $445M in savings secured, A perfect Valentine’s gift for all taxpayers—well-earned and deserved!” the post began. “Today’s batch includes a $8.2M USDA contract for ‘environmental compliance services for the implementation of pilot projects developed under the partnership for climate smart commodities.’”